An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

“Vi­o­lence against women is not in­evitable. It can and must be stopped.” These words from UN Women set the stage for Su­per­in­ten­dent Michelle Row­ley-Pow­der’s ur­gent call to ac­tion in the fight against gen­der-based vi­o­lence (GBV) in T&T.

As the head of the Spe­cial Vic­tims De­part­ment (SVD), Row­ley-Pow­der be­lieves that im­me­di­ate in­ter­ven­tion is cru­cial to cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment where girls and women can not on­ly re­cov­er from abuse but al­so thrive in a safe space. Re­veal­ing that 97 per cent of the vic­tims of GBV in T&T are women, she em­pha­sised that it is time for so­ci­ety to take a stand against its on­go­ing es­ca­la­tion.

High­light­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice’s (TTPS) ef­forts to re­duce GBV, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the 16 Days of Ac­tivism that be­gins to­day, she stat­ed, ‘The main ob­jec­tive is to raise aware­ness through sen­si­ti­sa­tion.

The 16 Days of Ac­tivism against gen­der-based vi­o­lence, run­ning from No­vem­ber 25 to De­cem­ber 10, will fo­cus glob­al at­ten­tion on the alarm­ing rise in vi­o­lence against women. This year’s theme is, “Every 10 Min­utes, a woman is killed. #NoEx­cuse. UNiTE to End Vi­o­lence against Women.”

Ac­cord­ing to un­women.org, in 2023, a woman was in­ten­tion­al­ly killed every ten min­utes by a part­ner or fam­i­ly mem­ber. With near­ly one in three women ex­pe­ri­enc­ing vi­o­lence in their life­time, the agency high­light­ed that girls are par­tic­u­lar­ly at risk, with one in four ado­les­cent girls ex­pe­ri­enc­ing abuse by their part­ners.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the SVD’s of­fice at the St Clair Po­lice Sta­tion last Thurs­day, she said the best way to do that was to reach peo­ple where they are–at malls, schools, and even shop­ping ar­eas. Row­ley-Pow­der said the next 16 days pro­vide an ide­al op­por­tu­ni­ty for all stake­hold­ers to reaf­firm their com­mit­ment and urged de­ci­sion-mak­ers to in­vest in pre­ven­tion, work­ing to­ward a fu­ture free from vi­o­lence against women and girls.

Elab­o­rat­ing on the work of the SVD, an amal­ga­ma­tion of the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit (CPU) and the Gen­der-Based Vi­o­lence Unit (GB­VU), the soft-spo­ken yet res­olute head ex­plained, “As the needs of the TTPS and the pub­lic evolve, we have had to adapt our re­sponse. To bet­ter sup­port vic­tims, the units have been merged in­to a sin­gle de­part­ment.”

Ahead of to­day’s for­mal open­ing cer­e­mo­ny, which will fea­ture Mrs Sharon Row­ley, the wife of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, as the guest speak­er, Row­ley-Pow­der said changes in­clud­ed re­train­ing per­son­nel as well as set­ting up a File Man­age­ment Unit.

The unit, she ex­plained, would help of­fi­cers build ac­cu­rate case files so they could be­come more ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive in their polic­ing. She added, “There are so many in­quiries be­ing han­dled by our of­fi­cers that we ab­solute­ly need an ef­fi­cient sys­tem to do all parts of our jobs while han­dling the vol­ume of work.” “Polic­ing isn’t just book­ing or ac­cept­ing re­ports; it’s be­ing able to pull to­geth­er a com­pre­hen­sive file in or­der to make pros­e­cu­tion and con­vic­tion in­evitable when it needs to hap­pen.”

Look­ing ahead to the next 16 days, she said the SVD would be present in every cor­ner of each polic­ing di­vi­sion, fol­lowed close­ly by the launch of the School In­ter­ven­tion Unit. This sub-unit will con­tin­ue its out­reach ef­forts in schools, ed­u­cat­ing chil­dren on how to recog­nise de­viant be­hav­iour, whether sex­u­al or oth­er­wise.